The More Things Change
by AstroGirl
Summary: An AU in which they never encounter the Liberator and end up on Cygnus Alpha instead.


**The More Things Change**  
**by AstroGirl**

In some ways, Cygnus Alpha was not as bad as Avon had expected. There was enough to eat, even if one were required to put in long hours of manual labor in the painfully primitive agricultural facilities in order to produce it. And Vargas's priesthood kept order, after a fashion. Like all governments, self-appointed or otherwise, they firmly believed it was their place and no one else's to exploit and to punish their fellows, and they had a tendency to respond harshly to anyone they viewed as infringing on that right. Thus Avon found it surprisingly rare that he was offered even the threat of violence, and those few who might dare anyway were usually warned off by a snarl carefully calculated to suggest that Avon was far more dangerous than he might first appear.

Avon was rather grateful for this; despite his recent history of violence, he was well aware that his primary assets lay in his mind, rather than his muscles, and that his computer skills far outweighed his fighting skills. And while he liked to think that his capacity for adaptation was nearly unlimited, he had not been looking forward to testing it in this particular area.

And yet, sometimes he suspected that the situation would be more tolerable if it _were_ the thuggish anarchy he'd anticipated. The current circumstances bore a depressing similarity to his life on Earth: mindless work supervised by idiots, under the constant threat of reprisal should he ever actually give voice to the obvious facts. Said facts being, of course, that he was infinitely more intelligent than those who'd set themselves up as his superiors and that his talents were being utterly wasted. Except that here he hadn't even any interesting technology to play with. State of the art on Cygnus Alpha, at least as far as the common prisoners were concerned, was a metal shovel.

Avon was hardly the only one to find himself deeply discontented with the political situation on Cygnus, such as it was, but at least _he_ had the sense to keep his head down and his mouth (mostly) shut. Of course, it only takes one troublemaker to make life difficult for everybody, and it would have been _far_ too much to expect that idiot Blake to show similar common sense...

Indeed, here he was, attempting to rally the masses again. This time, he was standing on a rock in the middle of a field, on the route back to the settlement from the area in which Avon's work detachment had been laboring. His face was rapt with the enthusiastic earnestness of the political agitator -- not all that different, Avon thought, from the expressions one often saw on the faces of Vargas's most devoted and gullible acolytes.

"Vargas is a fraud! In your hearts, you all know it. Even those drugs of his are fake! He's using them, don't you see? Using them as a means of controlling you!"

The sensible thing, of course, would be to walk on quickly, to put as much distance between Blake and himself as possible. And yet, Avon found himself stopping and moving forward through the gathering crowd, strangely fascinated. Not by the words, which were perfectly true, and, in Avon's estimation, also perfectly irrelevant, but by Blake himself. There was something bizarrely compelling about the way he just never seemed to become discouraged, never seemed to _learn_. Not to mention the positively mesmeric effect he seemed to be having on the crowd...

No sooner had Avon taken note of the mood, however, than it abruptly changed, a whispered ripple of fear running through the assembled mass. Avon turned in time to see a dozen or more of Vargas's brown-robed priests descending upon them, several of them armed with the ancient projectile weapons Vargas kept in reserve for special occasions. A weapon coughed, someone screamed, someone else started shouting about the will of God... Then another shot sounded, and pain blossomed, sharp and blinding, in his skull.

"Not again..." he heard Blake's voice wailing as he fell. "Not again, not again..."

The sound of it followed him into blackness.

* * *

He woke to a throbbing headache and the sound of voices.

"This one will live, my lord. The bullet grazed his skull, but the bleeding has ceased, and the damage does not seem great." A female voice, one of the priestesses, probably. He couldn't quite place it, not through the white noise that filled his mind.

"Good." Something prodded him. A foot, he thought. He must be lying on the floor. He tried to open his eyes, but the dizzying confusion of light and color as he did so made his stomach lurch, and he quickly closed them again. _This will pass_, he thought. _My brain is not damaged. This will pass._ Why did he hear those reassuring and possibly untrue words in Blake's voice?

"He will be the first of the sacrifices," the owner of the prodding foot continued. Vargas, he realized. Even in his current state, that booming, melodramatic voice was hard to mistake. "Others among the most recently arrived souls have informed me that this one was Blake's chief henchman on their transport vessel. It seems they were troublemakers there, too. He will be made an example of, and all will see the power of my wrath!"

Avon groaned. They ignored him.

"And what of the one called Blake, my lord?"

"Oh, I have something _special_ in mind for him. Later. At the ceremony of the equinox."

They laughed, loud and long. It hurt his head, but, mercifully, he lost consciousness before they were done.

* * *

He woke again, what seemed like a very long time later, to a throbbing ache in his arms that almost matched the one in his head, and a feeling of intense thirst. He opened his eyes, was struck with a blinding stab of sunlight, and shut them again with a feeble curse, waiting until a sudden wave of nausea had passed before carefully attempting it again.

He was in the middle of an empty plain, the bleak landscape of Cygnus Alpha stretching out in front of him as far as he could see. Something in the terrain or the half-dead vegetation looked vaguely familiar. He thought, through a dim mental haze, that he might be only a short distance from Vargas's stronghold, looking off in the approximate direction of the prison ships' landing area.

His arms, he discovered quickly, were tightly bound to a cross-like wooden frame which supported his sagging body. A weight hung around his neck, and he was able to move his lolling head enough to see the shape of a wooden board lying across his chest, though not to make out the words he knew must be written on it: "SO PERISH UNBELIEVERS."

Appropriate enough, really. Avon had never believed in anything. Only in practicalities, in money, in himself. And all three had let him down. Truth in advertising, then. He laughed feebly. Probably a sign of delirium, but did it matter now?

_Yes,_ he told himself. _Yes, it does. It has to. Stay focused. Do what you can to stay alive, because no one is going to help you, "unbeliever."_ Whether the next sound that emerged from him was a laugh or a sob, he could not tell, and did not bother to contemplate. Instead, he got to work. _Work the wrists. Back and forth. Back and forth. Stretch the ropes. Twist them. Abrade them against the wood. Ignore the blood. Ignore the pain._

But he gave out long before the ropes did, and in the descending blackness, the blood and pain vanished for him along with everything else.

* * *

He was surprised to find himself regaining consciousness again, and even more surprised at the voice speaking from the blackness. His sluggishly-stirring brain could not make out the words, but the timbre was unmistakable. _Blake._ Of all the things to find himself hallucinating, here at the end of his miserably unsuccessful life...

"Untie his hands," said Blake's voice, resolving into words at last, and another voice muttered something he couldn't quite catch.

Then, amazingly, suddenly, one of his hands was free, blood rushing into it like fire flowing through his arteries. He let out a yelp, then fell forward as the restraint holding his other arm also gave way. He landed against something solid and warm that caught and supported him.

He blinked, struggled to lift his head, to focus his eyes, to look at...

Yes. It _was_ Blake. How the hell...?

He started to croak out a question, but Blake said, "Here. Sit down," and gently lowered him to the ground. Not a difficult task, as his legs seemed incapable of supporting his weight. Someone loomed out of the gray edges of his peripheral vision and placed a water bag to his cracked and desiccated lips. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he had ever tasted.

"Drink it slowly," advised Blake. Under other circumstances, he might have made an acerbic reply involving how glad he was to have Blake around to give him such a blindingly obvious piece of advice, but, as it was, he simply nodded and took another small swallow.

"Blake," he said, when he felt capable of speech again. "How? They'd captured you. Said they were going to sacrifice you. I heard..." He had to stop and take a deep breath as his vision threatened to black out again, but the water and the blessed relief of being in a sitting position did seem to be clearing his head.

"Yes," said Blake with a smile. "They were. But they made one mistake. They decided to round up everyone who'd been part of my 'team of troublemakers' on the _London_, as well as everyone who'd been listening to my speeches. Locked us all up together."

The water bag retreated from his lips, and another voice came floating from behind him, sounding very self-satisfied. "Left 'em all locked up in the company of a master thief and escape expert!" The voice's owner stepped into Avon's field of vision and gave him a bright smile. He was familiar... Oh, yes, of course. Vila. The Delta thief. Avon felt his lips form into a small smile. It was painful, so he stopped.

"Very careless of them," Blake said.

"Left the weapons locker unguarded, too," said Vila. "Even more careless. Hardly even took talent to crack that primitive old lock."

"I see," Avon managed to croak. "And Vargas?"

There was grim satisfaction in Blake's voice. "Vargas is dead."

"Blake led a successful revolution! It was very impressive, Avon. You should have been there. Oh, and you're welcome, by the way. For the rescue."

Avon ignored him, his clearing vision focused on Blake. "So." It came out in a weak rasp. He licked his lips, swallowed, and started again. "So, I imagine now you take his place. Dictator of the convicts. I suppose by saving my life, you're expecting to gain yet another loyal acolyte?" He was rather proud of the wry twist he'd managed to put on that last word. He wasn't quite sure he'd be capable of it.

Blake shook his head, something blazing in his eyes. "You know me better than that, Avon. I don't want power."

Avon stared at him for a long moment. Know him better than that? Oddly, he suspected Blake was right. "What then? What next?"

"Next?" A huge smile burst across Blake's face. "Next, we get off this planet and get back to fighting the Federation. There's another convict ship scheduled to land four months from now. I intend to _take_ it." He tilted his head, giving Avon a speculative, almost challenging look. "What do you think?"

"I think..." He paused. Perhaps later he could attribute it to physical shock, a lack of oxygen to the brain. But right now, he was starting to believe Blake was capable of doing what he said. "I think I'm in."

"Oh, great," said Vila. "Here we go again!"

Blake's smile was so bright that Avon had to close his eyes. But he had the strange feeling he was going to be seeing it for a long, long time.


End file.
